An essay by Conor Byrnes.
PYS 2.3
अविद्यास्मितारागद्वेषाभिनिवेशाः क्लेशाः ॥ २.३ ॥
avidyasmita-räga-dvesabhinivesah pañca klesah
The Five Afflictions (Kleshas) are:
1. Avidya - Ignorance of one's Self
2. Asmita - Egoism
3. Raga - Desire, attraction, and attachment
4. Desha - Aversion or Hatred
5. Abhinivesha - Instinctive fear of death
These five Kleshas are the primary cause of suffering and misery.
- Translation by Manorama
Avidyā (the fundamental ignorance of the real nature of things), asmitā (the attachment to the ego and belief in the 'myth of me’), rāga (attachment), dveśa (aversion), and abhiniveśa (fear of death) are the five kleśas, the Five Afflictions in Patanjali's Yoga Sutra.
The practice of vidya involves realizing the eternal nature of the self and resting in the present awareness. Vidya allows one to experience fullness and transcend attachment and resistance.
Fundamental ignorance is believing that "me" is real, independent from the world, and is the Self. This attachment to body-mind formation is the basis of the 'myth of me', asmita or egotism. Ego thinks it knows. Therefore, it believes it knows what is best to chase and what is best to reject. In doing so, ego operates in a mode that is in opposition to existence, finally feeling that death is the extinguishing of the Self.
We are each like a wave, trying to construct a barrier between ourselves and the ocean, hoping to never be drowned, to never be reabsorbed. Not recognizing the whole time that this wave is the ocean. Thus, we live in insanity, always trying to gather momentum and mass, resisting other waves and the process of time, continually chasing and rejecting in more complicated ways to avoid the inevitable merging back into the Sea, the Source. In running from merging, the wave does not realize that it is resisting its own Self, fulfillment, bliss, freedom, eternality. This is ignorance, thinking that "I am this me here" in opposition to the life that is out there.
Body-mind will always have their waveform. But the wave remains forever the ocean. We will always have our frequencies of color that express, but all those colors never cease to be light. Realizing that is Buddhi, awakening intelligence, which finds light as the basis of all experience, which feels equilibrium in the changing tides. Buddhi contrasts to asmita. And vidya to avidya. Knowing this thinking "me" knows nothing truly, but still being centered in the ineffable light of I AM. Our practice is to orient the body-mind to the light like a sunflower following the sun, yet trusting at the same time we are being naturally pulled towards that light (abhyasa/vairagya). Being in the light is vidya, remembering and resting in the ever-present, the now, the light of awareness.
In vidya, we sense the fragrance of fullness, where there is space for the mind to appear that criticizes continually itself and its experience. Ask yourself how can I get attached to or resist something that is always moving, always changing? Have two breaths ever been the same? Getting attached to a snapshot of the river is ignorance. And yet this now, this light, this presence? Isn't it curiously eternal? Where can there be the death of that which is always here? Vidya is finding, resting in and realizing you are that which never dies.
Words by Conor Byrnes.
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